Gamification and motivation

Photo by Alex Radelich on Unsplash

It is said in the definitions of Gamification that one of the scopes is to bring motivation to the user — or employee since we mostly talk about Enterprise Software! I would rather ask why to do that? Is it actually possible? I would not claim myself as a Marxist, but maybe we should consider some of Marx’s statements since we talk about workers.

Employees use enterprise software in their daily tasks because they have to! Where is any motivation in that? How could that be possibly fun? To make that software easier to use is another story which I believe is the solution that fits, but to bring the motivation to the employee via gamified tools and saying that he would have fun by doing it, is something that by definition does not fit. The definition is that the employee has to go to work, has to work, has to use company tools and complete the daily tasks.

In the best case, even if someone does a job that she or he has studied, which finds interesting and that is happy for doing this specific job that she or he has chosen rather than doing any other job which accidentally happened to find in order to make a living, there is the obligation based on contract that she or he has to work. As a designer I see the challenge to make the tasks of an employee easier to be fulfilled, but I could never motivate someone do the tasks.

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